It’s sunday, and still no episode. Mumbles probably went into an alcohol-induced coma, and Rutskarn and Shamus are definately insane.
And if you ever get a guest star, I vote for Yahtzee. Just by the way.

I’m actually starting to wonder if something happened to Shamus, what with the total absence of signs of life for half a week.
I mean he or josh could have posted a short why-we’re-late-or-cancelling mini-post, like Rutskarn does every so often. Or even answered the comments asking about it since friday.

Or, even better, someone who really knows there way around it and can solve every chamber in ridiculously convoluted ways. They never get stuck, but they also never go the way that makes sense, and seems right to the people watching.

I’m with Raygereio on this. If playing games doesn’t make you a gamer, what does?
Side note: Reygereio really reminds me of Lefty Ruggiero, the notorious assassin who worked for the Bonanno crime family.

What iJustine does is not playing, it’s wandering around aimlessly in a 3D space, gradually and frustratedly completing activities others may find fun. Like a blind man tripping and falling down a slide in painfully achingly slow motion.

Note that I’m not defending the existance of this iJustine character, but not everyone has to be super-duper-awesome at videogames. This is in fact somewhat funny to me considering how often Josh has been accused of sucking at videogames in these comments.

And that’s not even going into my guess that that ditzy blond act is just that: an act.

Yes, the Riot Shotgun is so much better. As evidenced by the fact that it was doing virtually no damage because it failed to surpass the damage threshold of the basically naked White-legs you were fighting.

Shotgun Surgeon is weird. The only other thing that compares in terms of armour break is the perk that does something similar for your fists. My last playthrough, I took it pretty early, and it was always bizarre coming across a high-DT enemy, and thinking “Oop, this guy’s tough, better get out my anti-armour shotgun”. Never got used to it.

Also, most of the white legs he was ineffectually shooting at were in water, which I think is bulletproof (Joshua graham himself failed to kill the swimming ones last episode). The ones he shot on dry land tended to die a whole lot more.

It’s not that low, but yes, Sneering Imperialist is available whether you’re in Zion or not, so technically it does have its uses. Fight The Power is far more helpful, but Sneering Imperialist isn’t bad.

Okay, that Salt-Upon-Wounds dialogue option? If for some odd reason they didn’t want to put the options in that first choice it would’ve been so simple to just change the line from “this isn’t what I signed up for” to something like “You know what Joshua?” And followed up by the three, slightly rephrased options (the check, the fight and the “just shoot the bastard”). As it is I would never, ever pick the first one because I would assume the only option after that would be to try and convince Joshua to let this guy go.

Also, I think a few episodes ago we’ve established that it was Josh either pretending to be everybody else or holding the rest of the cast imprisoned by some means… now it turns out Mumbles has been possessing Josh (and Shamus had that cannibalism thing at level up)… this is getting confusing…

i know you NEVER sell unique items you either use them or keep them in yo house preferably in a locked safe in a locked box in a locked building surrounded by turrets, and super mutants (not yellow), and DeathClaw Mothers.

I suppose it’s meaningless to point out again that the reason the Dead Horses and Sorrows ACTUALLY turn warlike is encouraging Joshua to return to HIS old ways, since he’s their leader, so instead:

Yes, the rewards chest is extremely lazy and doesn’t make sense, I’m not sure why it’s there. There’s a mod that’s supposed to spread the stuff around to various places (among other things) but it doesn’t work at present.

In addition to Dinner Bell and caps, you also add the monsters whose eggs you gather to the thorn events that you yourself can participate in, as normally the thorn only lets YOU fight… Giant Radscorpions, Ants, and Geckos I think it is? I don’t know, I never really bothered to do the Thorn quests myself and only ever fought three Giant Radscorpions and paid for a Cazadors vs Deathclaw fight.

…Also technically drugs don’t work on Joshua, which I don’t think they every explain.

J.E. Sawyer (Lead designer for New Vegas) said on his Formspring that the reason why they had the chest at the end with all the clothing was so that players didn’t have to kill/glitch NPC’s in order to get their clothing/items.

Which leads to an interesting dilemma. Which is less immersion breaking: when a player thinks “whoah, that’s a cool unique armour, I need to get one like it, I’ll have to turn on the console to give it to myself” or “a mysterious chest out of nowhere, sitting on the ground for no reason where all the key NPCs apparently store their clothes.”

I mean, in recent years we’ve been forcefed the “immersion” concept to justify about half the retarded things in games and then we get something like this…

Yeah, how dare they offer a convenient way to access the otherwise inaccessible unique gear?! Unthinkable!

Really, it’s either the box or an angry crowd of players who’d complain about not getting them at all. I just don’t really see what the big fuss is. If the point of the box isn’t obvious from the get go, I don’t really know what to say. If it really irreparably breaks one’s immersion, then I think they might be taking the game a bit too seriously. I don’t really see much worth in having some convoluted explanation why all the stuff REALLY appears in the box. It wouldn’t really add anything to the DLC and a sizable amount of players wouldn’t really care either way.

TBH I’m not that annoyed at the box itself, I imagine I would be really glad to have it if I was doing an armour collection.

It’s just that I’ve had a few close encounters with devs, madness burning in their eyes, adding/removing stuff from games and preaching about how they’re doing it for immersion’s sake. Then, after some game features have been castrated under this pretence, some other guy comes along and adds stuff like “an achievement, it will pop up when you get to the moment when your sister dies and will have some pun about family in the name.” So yeah, I’m pretty ranty on the subject.

Sawyer has stated that when push comes to shove, he puts gameplay over believability. He knows that people expect good rewards by the end and he doesn’t want people to kill/glitch NPCs so he decided to kill two birds with one stone.

Personally, I thought that Big MT was better designed than most of the rest of the game. It was a tad ugly at points, but the enemies are varied nicely, there aren’t too many rat mazes, and the terminals and environmental storytelling were good enough that I was more than willing to explore every nook and cranny. Also, AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL.

True. Old World Blues is very lengthy if you do some exploring, but I doubt they will.

On the topic of OWB, I just finished a playthrough of it now. Went in at level 6, came out at 20. Explored everything before finishing the main quest to get the best endings this time. Spoiler for those who haven’t played it:

For some reason I felt really bad for killing the Think Tank, mostly because of how Dr. Klein reacted and lines they say during the battle.

If you killed the Think Tank you didn’t get all the best endings. You can reform them by doing 0, 8, Dala, and Borous’ quests and turning them on Klein, or scare them in line by pretending to be Mobius, either way you make them your servants and put them towards serving the cause of SCIENCE in a more contained, benevolent manner, rather than just letting them run wild as the Pre-War government let them, or by letting the madness of isolation eat away at them.

Yeah, I got the best Think Tank ending in my last playthrough by doing all their personal quests (Was level 40 with 10 intelligence and had 100 in most skills). Didn’t have enough points to pass most of the skill checks and wanted to get the different ending anyway.

Speaking of personal quests, Josh MUST either bring a teddy bear, get his perception to 8, or take Lady Killer when he talks to Dala. Her ‘scanning’ orgasm thing was the funniest part of the whole DLC, along side Borous’s AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL.

On that subject.
I find it interesting to compare Old World Blues to Dragon Age 2’s Legacy DLC which came out around the same time.
Both are about equal in cost; yet Legacy takes barely 2 hours, while Old World Blues offers you a gameplay time rivaling that of most of full 50,- euros costing games these days.

Funny story: I used to play Diablo 1 when I was three years old. My parents were okay with it because my brothers convinced me that it was ketchup, not blood, that the bad guys were spilling out onto the ground.

Okay, now I understand what you guys meant by confusing rat mazes. I never bothered with Three Marys for some reason, so I was luckily spared from its particular brand of torture.

On a different note, I think what I liked most in HH was luring bunches of enraged White Legs to the readily available stream so that I could watch the cool sink/float animation of their dead bodies… yeah.

The way the whole drama plays out was for me the most disappointing thing about the ending. There’s no reason to feel sorry or pity for Salt-Upon-Wounds. If he’d only shown some actual emotion. Still, sparing him actually ends being even more cruel than death given the ending he gets, where he ends up as a broken man and has to eventually witness the slaughter of his whole tribe before he dies.

The Sorrows’ change in nature stems actually from the New Canaanites being admired and worshipped as being the true followers of the Father in the Caves (which again, is info hidden in dialogue) and the Sorrows look up to them for guidance. Daniel and Joshua are both seen as leaders and whatever they do would have an impact on the Sorrows.

A thing about Daniel is that his contempt for violence stems from having to witness the razing of New Canaan and especially the death of his mentor, Bishop Mordecai, who was burned to death in his house, unable to escape because of a handicap. More importantly, he feels guilty for the New Canaanites indirectly bringing the war to the Sorrows (and other tribes) since they were deemed guilty by association by Caesar. The White Legs had already wiped out a couple of tribes prior to the happenings in Zion hence it’s easy to see why he’s so eager to leave the place.

Joshua, on the other hand, is a good example of the phrase “The path to hell is paved with good intentions”. In past and in present. He’s only doing what he deems right and just, but he fails to see the effect it has on him, fueling the darker sides of his soul, making him in effect becoming the feared Legate he once was. Preaching his own interpretations of his religion’s beliefs to the impressionable Sorrows’ it at least in essence makes quite a lot of sense for them to make the turn, especially when those beliefs won the war.

The whole angle for having the Courier intervene in the scene to offer Joshua the chance to redeem himself “in his darkest hour” just fails flabbergastingly here. I only realized what I’d done when the ending slide told me. Which is why I wish they’d handled the whole ending scene differently.

Quote: “In past and in present. He's only doing what he deems right and just, but he fails to see the effect it has on him, fueling the darker sides of his soul, making him in effect becoming the feared Legate he once was.”

Well, that’s the thing. I think the Courier’s job is to either lead Joshua’s slide back into damnation, or show him that one can provide wasteland/ Mohave justice and not become a monster. Unfortunately the quest dialogue/ choices are so hamfisted that it’s almost stupid.

Really, this is, to me, the worst DLC out of all the Fallout DLCs… except for the Survivalist messages. I’m a story guy and it pains me to say that the story stuff is so good that it almost makes up for the unrealistic “moral” choices the developers wanted you to make.

The loot box at the end was so 4th wall. I mean, really? If they didn’t want people to murder characters for their clothes then they shouldn’t put the characters in a game that’s part of the sandbox genre… or they shouldn’t give them unique clothes. It’s not hard but somehow those people at Obsidian make it seem really difficult… to trust that they know what they’re doing. This DLC made it seem that they were just phoning it in, but the release of OWB showed that all their resources actually went into the 3rd DLC.

Thus, HH was a filler DLC. Glad I only paid $3.50 for it. I think I actually might have paid too much.

Honestly, I can see that.
While I really liked Dead Money’s writing, both that and the way it’s presented to the player just doesn’t appeal to everyone.
Meanwhile the gameplay of Dead Money just really isn’t good enough to carry it on it’s own.

Yeah, Point Lookout wasn’t difficult. I did thought the swamps however were a pain to walk around in.
My level of annoyance after 15 minutes of Point Lookout swamps was far higher then after 15 minutes of Dead Money’s fogmaze.

Yeah, but I mean the deformed locals do crazy amounts of damage with weapons that shouldn’t hurt that much. They’re basically cheating. Once I took the sneak+snipe approach of not even getting shot, they weren’t a problem, but still…
I could, in theory, also have tanked them with my 200+ stimpacks and my usual fifty pounds of food, but its just not my style.

Watching Josh troll the audience and his fellow commentators with deliberately boneheaded and/or annoying gameplay choices and tics is giving me a strong desire to get the game myself just so that I can go through and play it PROPERLY. I don’t even own a Windows computer these days (well, not a current-gen one), but I’d be prepared to make a Windows partition just to play New Vegas at this point if it didn’t mean giving an outrageous amount of money to Microsoft for something I wouldn’t use for anything else.

Recognizable troll-playthroughs of games could actually be a powerful marketing tool. I’m serious.

I want you to know that, during the sale recently, I bought Fallout: New Vegas solely because of what I’ve seen of it on Spoiler Warning. I did not buy Fallout 3 or any DLC, also solely based on Spoiler Warning.

By the way, follow-up to that: Last night I had a dream where I discovered that the pull-off lids for cans of cat food had a weight of — and a value of 1, so I decided to pick them up and sell them later.

I would say mumbles is kanaya, because she likes boobs and she’s a (cannibal) so she’s like a rainbow drinker. Also i watch john and dave play sburb so many times now i can say everything without even watching it.

And an other little thing if you have seen the washington rap that mumbles posted on her site, you should go on youtube and search for equius zahhak the vid is the first one the list, its so hilarious its a motherfrucking MiRaClE.

the worst part of those thorn side quests was finding that cazadore nest which is in probably one of the hardest to find locations on the map. probably because when you look at the path to get there it looks too steep to actually climb, also if you play with partner npcs they cannot climb the path. but otherwise its not bad otherwise the rest of the parts of it are somewhat easier to find.

As someone who also provides “free entertainment” on a website, nothing hurts a readership like not posting stuff. “Complaining” is also a way a webmaster can be made aware of a problem that might currently be unnoticed.

Also, the content is free but is the readership? That is to say that while for me Spoiler Warning is free, is the readership free for Shamus? With his less and less focused on programming, writing another book, etc, I have to imagine that TwentySided is something of an in-direct or possibly even direct source of revenue. That’s not just the PayPal button, either.

I think regular readers are the ones most likely to buy Shamus’ book, the ones most likely to talk about it, to recommend the site, the book, to tell a friend. When the regularity of free content begins to fluctuate the readership will start dwindling. Only very loyal ones will retain interest if there isn’t a new post for weeks on end, if there’s a ‘schedule’ for content which isn’t kept, etc, etc. The effects of lost readers ripple outwards, so what was just complaints over something free not being there to entertain us will in the long run hurt the possibilities of not-so-free content.

The only reason I read Shamus’ articles on the Escapist was because he linked them, I liked them very much, but if he neglected Twenty Sided and never posted links to them I wouldn’t have ever read them. The Escapist paid him (hopefully?) for that content, so being able to get a number of readers from here to there was a good thing.

Then finally on top of all that this blog acts not only as a source of publicity (by which someone willing to pay Shamus to be a huge dork might notice) but also acts as a CV. If I was the editor of an online/glossy magazine thinking I want to hire someone to write a five part series on procedural content, would I pick Shamus — who has lots of proof of consistency and quality — or some guy with a blog who wrote a VERY in-depth and insightful post on procedural content two years ago, with (Part 1) in the title and never bothered to follow up?

I’d hire the consistent guy, I don’t care if the other guy shits rainbows if he can’t keep the shitting on a somewhat regular schedule.

Also this isn’t me lambasting Shamus&co for not having a SW episode on Friday. They do amazing work and Shamus keeps to his schedules really damn well, which I find bloody impressive — I’d post once a month and I’d probably just tell everyone about how I made awesome pancakes. This is more just me voicing my opinion on how ‘free’ isn’t really free.

Best example of this: Jeph Jacques who writes and draws Questionable Content. Five days a week, I’ve never seen him actually not post SOMETHING up even if it’s just Angry Bird, because I know there’ll be a comic everyday I keep checking every weekday. It’s ‘free’ yet somehow I own quite a bunch of QC related t-shirts…

“Buy Shamus’ book?” I must have missed that post. Since when could I do that?

RE: Everything Else:
I understand that nothing is truly free. It costs someone, somewhere, something to create and distribute that product. The content doesn’t actively cost consumers money to consume, though, and that’s as far as most consumers are concerned.

Ah, yeah, but my point was that sometimes the ‘free’ stuff that seems like it would cost the creator is actually making money for them in odd ways. So there’s an incentive, beyond just creativity, to keep doing this. Monies, glorious glorious monies. With which to purchase food and shelter.

Also I’m sort of… assuming Shamus’ book he’s been banging on about writing is going to be a purchasable book? Hoping, at least. It’d be nice to have on my coffee table.

Hah. JJ, has nothing on Howard Tayler of http://www.schlockmercenary.com/ . The guy who for the past 11 (eleven) years has been publishing 7 comics per week, excatly on time each day. Even when the power transformer supplying his server literary blew up, he put another site up in order to deliver the content on time. He is The Determinator of Web Comics.

If I had to guess it seems like youtube might not be uploading properly this week. All of the shows this week have been at least a few hours off of schedule and youtube has been doing this weird thing with my subscription to them where it says that they’ve uploaded something but nothing is uploaded. I think that what’s happening is that youtube is being finicky and not uploading the episode properly. I’m pretty sure it is a youtube problem because a number of the channels that I follow on it seem to be having the same problem.

U can check the livestream for the whole recording session and see into the spoiler warning future! no chat though which is sad :(. IT does show however the horrors shamus warned about! So much inventory managment do wonder theres no episode :D there seems to be hardly anything to show us.

Somehow, I feel like part of the magic just left the show. It was great wondering what exactly Josh would do next, wondering what wierd and whacky bugs he would run into. Still, the best part of the show is the banter but now there’s just a little bit less behind it.

Having said that, it is nice to see Josh get some use out of the incinerator.

So here’s the “word of dev” on what they were trying to do, how they were trying to do it and for what reasons. I have seen quite a bit of the game though am not familiar with it intimately, which may or may not be related to the fact I scare very easily but I am curious if this will bring up any thoughts.

Have no fears, person that shares my F:NV character’s name. The glory of a thirty minute long episode has been provided for the faithful Followers of the Warningpocalypse. Sadly, Mumbles’ absence continues. .

On reflection, Rutskarn might have found out what kismesis means some other way, i.e. not by reading Homestuck, but I find that unlikely since those who follow Homestuck generally fail to grasp some of its more abstract social constructs.